Choco pie

Variations of the original go back to as far as 1917 in the southern United States. In 1929, Chattanooga Bakery created the Moon Pie with marshmallow filling and Graham crackers for local miners in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

In 1961, a Japanese confectionery company Morinaga & Company started selling Enzeru Pie (エンゼルパイ, Angel Pie) which was developed with reference to Scooter Pie, a version of Moon Pie.

In 1973, a member of the R&D team of the Korean firm Tongyang Confectionery visited a hotel in Georgia, US, and was inspired by the chocolate-coated sweets available in the hotel's restaurant. He returned to South Korea and began experimenting with a chocolate biscuit cake, creating the “choco pie” as it is known to Koreans. The name "Choco Pie" became popular when Tongyang first released the Orion Choco Pie, and was well received by Korean children, as well as the elderly, because of its affordable price and white marshmallow filling. Tongyang Confectionery later renamed the company Orion Confectionery thanks to the success of the Orion Choco Pie brand.

PNB, a bakery company founded in 1951 in Jeonju, South Korea, is famous for its traditional choco pie confectionaries. This earlier timeline indicates an earlier existence of a variation of the treat in Korean history. There is a related historical connection as this bakery is prevalent only near the traditional Hanok villages of Jeonju.

In 1979, Lotte Confectionery began to sell a similar confection. When Lotte Confectionery put the Lotte Choco Pie on the market, it chose to spell the prefix slightly differently in Hangul from how Tongyang was spelling it. Tongyang had been using "쵸" ("Chyo"), while Lotte began using "초" ("Cho"). Haitai and Crown Confectionery also began selling their own versions of choco pies. Lotte also began selling as Choco Pie in Japan in 1983.

In 1999, after many years of sales of different "Choco Pie" products, Tongyang (Orion) filed a lawsuit against Lotte for their use of the term "Choco Pie", claiming that the name was their intellectual property. The court ruled, however, that Tongyang was responsible for having allowed its brand name to become, over time, a generic trademark and that the term "choco pie" was to be considered a common noun due to its generic descriptive sense in reference to confections of similar composition.

In 2016, Orion released a banana-flavored Choco Pie to celebrate its 60th anniversary. It is the first variation of the original product in 42 years since the company launched the Choco Pie with marshmallow cream in 1974.

In 2017, Orion launched its premium choco pie brand "Choco Pie House".

In 2020, Orion released Chal (meaning "chewy" in Korean) Choco Pie to celebrate Choco Pie's 45th anniversary. Chal Choco Pie has 2 flavors of inseolmi and black sesame rice cake. Due to the product line's launch, overall Choco Pie sales in January and February increased by about 20% compared to the same period last year.

Orion has launched springs seasonal-limited edition of Choco Pie ever since the year of 2017. In 2017, Orion launched Choco Pie Strawberry, which has strawberry jam inside the marshmallow. In 2019, Orion launched a new edition with pistachio and berry flavor. In 2020, it launched Choco Pie Strawberry Blossom. It is covered in pink-colored chocolate instead of the usual dark brown color. 3 weeks after launching, over a 5 million of accumulated number of pies were sold.

In January 2021, Orion launched its first winter limited edition, 'Choco Pie Chung Happy Berry Chocolate', 46 years after its establishment. The product is a reinterpretation of the chocolate pie as a holiday cake concept for the end of the year and consists of a chocolate cake filled with chocolate berry syrup and marshmallow.